Overview
- The peer-reviewed modeling study, published Monday in Communications Sustainability, finds wind and solar deliver more combined climate and public-health benefit per dollar across nearly every U.S. region through 2050.
- The authors compared equal-dollar investments in utility-scale solar and onshore wind to direct air capture across 22 grid regions and found DAC only pulls ahead nationally under an extreme breakthrough scenario.
- The modeled breakthrough assumes DAC energy use drops to about 800 kWh per ton and costs fall to about $100 per ton, yet renewables still outperform DAC in many regions including much of the Upper Midwest.
- Today's commercial DAC requires roughly 5,500 kWh and about $1,000 to capture a ton of CO2, and on grids with fossil power it leads to more greenhouse gases and local air-pollution harm through 2050 than it offsets.
- The study highlights added health damage from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and fine particle emissions when DAC draws power from fossil plants, and it frames policy toward decarbonizing the grid now while continuing DAC R&D for later legacy CO2 removal, with recent reports of higher-efficiency tandem solar panels strengthening the case for near-term renewable deployment.